All the Arts, All the Time

UC Santa Barbara wins the Lotery archive

Though it remains decidedly under-appreciated, the Architecture and Design Collection at the UC Santa Barbara Art Museum is among the finest architecture archives in the nation.

Established in 1963 by the architectural historian David Gebhard, it includes the work of Irving Gill, Rudolph Schindler and Myron Hunt, among many others. It has grown deeper yet with the recent acquisition of archive of Rex Lotery, whose work both on his own and with Ray Kappe (in the firm Kahn, Kappe, Lotery & Boccato) established him as one of Southern California's leading postwar modernists.

A reception last weekend at the remarkable hillside Montecito house Lotery designed for himself and his family featured remarks from the architect's widow, Fran Lotery, as well as Kathryn Kanjo, director of the University Art Museum, and the architectural historian Nicholas Olsberg, who told a standing-room living room crowd that he is planning a series of four exhibitions in the coming years using material from the archive.

The archive has been without a supervising curator since Kurt Helfrich left the post last year for a job in London with the Royal Institute of British Architects. More images from the Lotery archive after the jump. Click to enlarge.